


Many Waters Cannot Quench Love

by FlyingPigPoet



Series: Before the Girl Took Flight [3]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Buffy crossover, F/F, Lena's romantic past, why everybody in the pilot is so awkward
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-07 13:06:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 14,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11059596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlyingPigPoet/pseuds/FlyingPigPoet
Summary: When Lex Luthor tries to blow up Metropolis in his effort to kill Superman, everyone in his life is affected: Clark, Jimmy, Lena, Lillian, and people he doesn't even know. And as much as they all have loved him in the past, they all have to realize that he does not care about their suffering.orThe one where we find out why Lena and James want to leave Metropolis so badly.





	1. Run Silent, Run Deep

**Author's Note:**

> "Many waters cannot quench love; neither can the floods drown it." Song of Solomon 8:7.

Few people who knew Lena Luthor would have recognized her that morning, at 3:45 a.m., barely twelve hours since Lex Luthor had set off maybe forty bombs throughout Metropolis and a few other cities. It still wasn't clear if the other cities had been copycats and not Lex at all, but Lena tiredly figured it hardly mattered. All of the chaos, blood and death of humans and aliens committed in the attempt to erase from Earth the one human-appearing extraterrestrial that Lex feared most (because he had once loved most) was going to be blamed on Lex.

Deep in the subbasement of LuthorCorp, Lena was working quickly but methodically, packing ten lead-lined silver cases with what she knew to be Lex's most dangerous technologies that were not actually illegal. Anything that incorporated kryptonite, she left for the authorities to find. There was enough of that to keep them happy.

But there was also more than enough of the... rest: the yet-unpatented or -unfinished inventions, the ones that Lena and Lex had collaborated on. A few were ones he started and asked for her help with, but most were her brainchildren that he had added an idea to or tweaked. The police, the government, they had no right to take her personal property, but she knew they would find a pretext under the Patriot Act or the Area 51 Act. 

And that could never happen. So it wouldn't. Now, even if they somehow found the subbasement, somehow learned of the possibility of any of these things, by the time they got here, it would all be gone. Check.

She wore grey coveralls and thick gloves, and a hood to keep stray hairs from getting loose. She snapped each case shut and listened to the locks whirr. Then, one by one, she lugged them down the narrow hallway that led down to an underground river, exactly the sort of thing Lex most loved for his more inventive labs. He always said that every plan should have an exit strategy--which was Lex using Lionel's business jargon for what Lena belatedly realized had meant escape route. Still, he hadn't been entirely wrong.

She loaded all ten of the cases onto the low, narrow barge, then went back to lock the door behind her and set the tiny, pre-coded explosives, which would, over the course of the next few days, in response to the natural tremors of the city, gradually collapse the tunnel.

Then she stepped into the barge and sailed underneath Metropolis and out the south side of the city. Check.


	2. When the Dam Blows

Detective Sarah Waters, MPD, was pissed off. Again.

Over the course of the year, she had been scrupulously collecting evidence about a domestic terrorist attack being planned against aliens and alien-sympathizers (as the Department still insisted on calling them). Her main suspect was the acting-CEO of LuthorCorp, a rich white man with a genius IQ and a family known for its philanthropic commitments. The potential of the crimes to be labeled hate crimes if they did happen might shift the jurisdiction to being federal rather than metropolitan, but Waters was optimistic. She was a senior detective in the newly formed Science Division in Metropolis, so since it was alien-related, she should be able to see it through.

That was what she thought.

And she was two days away from closing in. She had finally been allowed to read-in the chief of the Bomb Squad and he had been prepping his team for their sting when the first explosion sounded.

So, yeah, okay, fine. The MPD's "instantaneous response" to the bombings was reported as "near miraculous" by that Daily Planet reporter, Clark Something. Her name was even mentioned. Somehow he even found out that she had warned her superiors about the imminent attack and, when they had refused to authorize early action, she had gotten a warning to Superman.

And Superman had called Lex out, forcing him to take public credit for the bombings, which meant first, that they knew unequivocally who they were looking for, and second, that her superiors couldn't put the kibosh on her pursuit of him. And that was good. It was.

But still there had been injuries and deaths, property damage and fear in the city. In her city. And still, Lex Luthor was on the loose. So yes, Detective Waters was pissed.

Again.


	3. All Things Rise and Fall

Life, thought Lillian Luthor, came in waves: sometimes the small, warm, temperate ones, like her courtship with Lionel; sometimes storm waves followed by sunshine, like Lex's difficult birth; rough seas, like Lena; and now, this year, one tidal wave after another.

Lionel's illness. Lex's mismanagement of the company. Lena being elected to the Board of LuthorCorp. Lionel's death.

And now, this.

Lillian had always been fascinated by the waves, how the moon regulated the tides, how humans always settled on rivers, how humans would stand on a beach foolishly watching the tide pull a mile away from its normal edge, stand there taking pictures when a wiser soul would run for the fastest transport in the other direction.

In the days after Lionel's death, Lillian had sat watching YouTube videos of the tidal wave in south India in 2004, the tsunami in northeastern Japan in 2011. The devastation was almost as complete as that of the atomic bombs.

But Lillian was not the watch-photograph-die type human. Sometimes she felt barely human at all. The cold tide of death pulled and pushed puny humans aside, leaving wreckage in their wake. But Lillian was more than human. She was a mountain, cold stone on the outside a mile high. But underneath, deep, so very deep, she was lava.

She had to be. It kept her from turning to ash.


	4. Crystallization

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback.

Izzy had always been fascinated by patterns. When she was three, she would sit in Gram Piper's lap at the piano, copying the way she hit the keys in different orders to make songs. When she was six, her favorite cousin, Rob, had taught her Morse code, and they had communicated via the wall between their bedrooms when the families visited each other.

In college, she studied math and literature. In grad school (much later) she studied more esoteric subjects with much less predictable patterns than mere code or metaphor. She enjoyed London, thrived there, subsidizing her student stipend by playing piano at the chess club above the Raven & Finch. She had done such jobs before, in college, to earn beer money. People liked a little Tin Pan Alley, a little Broadway, a little Billy Joel. She could play them all, while working out quadratic equations in her head. It was a knack, she supposed. Then again, music was just applied math.

The London crowd preferred classical, which was fine with her. She needed the sheet music in front of her to play it, but it stretched her more. Oddly enough, she had never learned to play chess, until one blizzardy Saturday morning when she had shown up to work to find only one club member sitting at a chessboard, playing against herself.

Izzy took the opportunity of taking off her coat, scarf and gloves to appreciate the woman. She wore wellies and good wool trousers and a cream Irish fisherman's knit sweater. Her long black hair was tied in two braids down her back. Her black-rimmed glasses partly obscured pale green eyes. Izzy was entranced.

As if she sensed Izzy's gaze, the woman looked up and turned. Her smile was quick and genuine. "Oh! It's not just me today! Another hearty soul! Care for a game?"

"Oh, I'm just the piano player. Sorry."

The woman cocked her head. "Pianist, I'd say. I have heard you play, you know."

"I don't think I've ever seen you before."

"Well, I don't think I've ever seen you look up from your music before, so we're even. Come on, play a game with me."

"Oh, but I--"

"Fine. If anybody else comes in, you can go play for them. But for now," she bit her lip, "play with me."

Izzy was sure that the woman couldn't possibly see the hot gay mess that was her heart unraveling in her chest. She fiddled with her cane awkwardly. "I don't actually know how to play."

"I'll teach you. C'mon, please? I play alone a lot, but today I'd appreciate the company."

Izzy shrugged and made her way to the table. Her limp was far less pronounced than it had been all year, as if recently she had passed some invisible marker and healing was finally happening in earnest.

The woman didn't remark on it as Izzy sat in the chair and lay the cane on the floor at her feet."

"I'm Lee."

"Izzy."

"Pleasure to meet you. Do you know the pieces and how they move?"

"Nope. I know nothing." Izzy blushed to admit it.

"Excellent. Then you won't have to unlearn anything."

Lee was a very good teacher, patient and clear, even if a little... aesthetically distracting. She taught Izzy how to look several steps ahead to see the consequences of any single move. She taught her when to defend and when to sacrifice a piece.

And at the end of the day, when the custodian came to lock up, Lee gave Izzy her phone number (another pattern) and told her to call.

"Maybe next time, we can play at my place," she said with a wink.

And Izzy thought that flirting, like most games of skill and chance, was also a pattern.


	5. I Drink a Rain of Ashes

Rumors were rife on the streets of Metropolis that Superman was dead, killed by Lex Luthor's kryptonite bombs, but there was nothing that Clark Kent could do about it right then. Perry White had demanded interviews with victims, first-responders, police, the mayor, everybody. Daily Planet reporters were being run off their feet. Also, Clark feared that Superman appearing unharmed or, worse, triumphant, would only trigger Round Two of Lex's grudge match against extraterrestrials. So Superman laid low while Clark got his job done.

Out front of the FBI headquarters, the Fire Department, the MPD Science Division and the Bomb Squad trucks were blocking pedestrian access to the block, but Clark's press pass got him and Jimmy Olsen a hundred yards closer than most. The lead detective, Sarah Waters, was a cop who knew a thing or two about controlling the story of an attack like that. Superman had worked with her a time or two before and Clark knew that without her early warning, the carnage would have been considerably worse.

They approached her as she turned away from where she had been arguing with agents in HazMat suits.

"Detective Waters? Clark Kent, Daily Planet. This is Jimmy Olsen. Can we have a word?"

The detective took in Olsen's camera and Kent's press pass and ran her hand through her short dark hair. Her face was smudged with soot. "Make it quick, Mr. Kent. I've got miles to go before I sleep."

"Can you confirm the number of casualties?"

"Not at this time."

"Can you confirm that you are working with federal agents?"

"Yes. The bomb at the FBI building, along with the alleged alien hate-crime aspect of the attack, have shifted the jurisdiction over to the FBI."

He could hear the bitterness in her voice. "Can you confirm that it was the MPD that identified the potential for this attack?"

"I can. We've been monitoring electronic communications regarding an impending attack for some time."

"And Lex Luthor?"

"The suspect is still at large at this time. We appreciate the public's help in locating him but citizens should not, repeat NOT, try to approach him as we believe him to be armed and dangerous. Our tip line is open."

"Thank you, Detective."

She looked surprised that he didn't push her for more, as did Jimmy. Clark said, "Can my colleague here take a few pictures?"

"Go right ahead, but we'll be pulling the tape back soon, so make it quick."

She strode off to yell at the next person, and Clark thought he recognized the dark-haired woman who had just pulled off the hood of her bulky yellow HazMat suit, and he pulled Jimmy by the elbow in a different direction.

"Clark, you all right?"

"What do you think? Of course not. I need to figure out the next move. Perry wants a one-on-one with the mayor, but I don't really dare. He's seen me too often..."

"Maybe you could work it so he demands to be interviewed by Perry instead of you? You know his secretary hates you."

"Mmm. I like the way you think. But then, meanwhile, I mean, I know what I want to do, but Perry..."

James looked down at his super friend. "Clark, you taught me to follow my heart. I'm going to go photograph what they'll let me see. You go do what you need to do."


	6. Still Falls the Rain

Jessica Huang got through the enhanced security at LuthorCorp and then made her first stop of the day down in the mailroom. She got her own mail and Lena's and headed directly to Lena's small, personal lab. She left the muffin, coffee and three letters on Lena's desk and moved to her own lab table, where the bits of her own device lay scattered. She went to the safe and unlocked it, taking out her lab notebook for this project and Lena's on the kryptonite detection device that she had been working on in secret for months. Jess slid both small Moleskine notebooks into the leg pocket of her cargo pants, and pulled the white lab coat over her clothes.

She checked her phone, but there were no messages. She sat down at the desk and stared at her device. She was an okay engineer, but she knew that she was nothing in comparison to anyone at LuthorCorp. The only reason that she was here now was her friendship with Lena in grad school.

It had been in that Harvard Kennedy Business School leadership class where they had met and been assigned to be on the same team, to find a case study where problematical leadership had created a business problem, apply better leadership principles, and solve the problem (at least in theory). Jess had spent hours in the library reading case studies and had finally given up and gone with some friends to Charlie's Kitchen, a beer garden in Harvard Square. While she and her friends were eating burgers and chugging Sam Adams lagers, Jess had noticed the dark-haired woman, sitting alone, scribbling in her notebook, and had recognized her classmate. She murmured an excuse to her friends and sauntered over to the other woman's table.

"Hey," she said. "You busy? Maybe we could talk about that class assignment? I haven't got a clue how to find a good case study..."

The woman looked up. "Oh! You're Jess, aren't you?"

"I am." Jess laughed. "But I'm not good at names. You are?"

"Lena. Luthor." She sat, tensed, as if waiting to see how Jess would take the information that was her name. And honestly, it took Jess a few seconds to figure out why.

"Shit. LuthorCorp? That Luthor?"

Lena nodded sadly. Jess grinned. "So my team partner is some kind of genius. Awesome."

Lena cocked her head. "My brother..."

"Has been accused of crimes but nobody has proved it and he always goes free, so he can't be that bad if they can't nail him for any of the things they accuse him of. Did you really get your first patent at nineteen?"

"I did."

"Wow. I didn't get mine until twenty-two!"

Lena smiled tentatively. "Join me? Or, I guess you're actually with friends..."

But Jess had joined her and they had talked for hours. She had quickly learned how fast Lena's mind worked, how much she wanted to achieve for her family's company, both as an engineer and scientist (hence her PhD work at MIT) and as a businesswoman (hence her simultaneous MBA at Harvard). Lena had goals and high standards and the skills and wit to make her dreams happen. Jess had attached herself to this woman's coattails and had been hanging on for dear life ever since, first as her study buddy and now as her assistant.

When Lena entered at 8:02 a.m., Jess had imitated that bad AOL voice. "You. Have. Mail."

Lena looked at the letters on her desk, picked out the one that seemed thicker, like it was written on old-fashioned stationery.

Sliding a pen under the flap, she liberated the message, read it, looked away, read it again, then handed it to Jess.

Jess read: "Ms. Luthor. I understand that your brother must hate me. But I am worried that he will do more damage, hurt more people, if I don't find a way to stop him. Will you please help me? Could we meet on the roof of LC at nine tonight?" A hand-written sigil, the S inside the pentagon, followed the signature, Superman.

Jess said, "Number one, how do we know this is actually from him? Number two, how would you get a yes or no back to him?

Lena said, "Look at the postscript."

Jess turned the card over to read: "To get in touch, email marktwaindet@gmail.com and my friend will contact me."

"That only answers question number two."

"I know. But if I'm on the roof at nine tonight, with a friend carrying a concealed video camera... that should be enough, right?"

"A video camera."

"Yes."

"And where is your friend supposed to find a video camera?"

"Um, Public Relations?"

//

Jess requisitioned a video camera and waited on the roof patiently. Lena sat next to her, meditating, until the sound of a cape swishing in the wind and a pair of boots landing opened her eyes. Jess immediately started recording.

"Superman. So that note really was from you," Lena said, rising to her feet.

"Ms. Luthor. I am so happy that you were willing to meet me. I would have understood if you had felt that this wasn't... appropriate."

"Honestly, Superman, after everything my brother has done--wait, I'm sorry, 'allegedly' done--I was shocked that you would even want to talk to me."

He looked surprised. "Why not? You're not him. I mean, he talks well of you and your fine mind, so I just assumed that you were like him. I mean, not like him. I guess I mean that you were like the Lex I knew years ago, not now."

"And somewhere, buried beneath all those words, I think there was an actual compliment."

Superman nodded affably. "There was." He smiled, his white teeth gleaming. But through the viewfinder of the camera, his eyes looked tired. He and Lena turned away and sat on a raised mini-wall of cement, obscuring their conversation.

Jess held the camera steady, but let her mind drift. She thought back to that first project at Harvard, how Lena had talked about Lex being groomed to be LuthorCorp's CEO when their father retired, how Lex talked about aliens on Earth and how the company's mission statement would have to change when he was in charge. Technology for the Protection of Human Well-Being. He made it sound good when he talked, but Lena had been wary, once he became junior Vice President of Product Development, about how his hiring practices included not just skills and education but also political stance on aliens. Within eight months, he had loaded R&D with anti-alien fanatics. They were smart, talented engineers, yes, but there was a lack of diversity of thought there that Lena thought was a detriment to creative problem-solving.

"It's the reverse of what often happens in engineering. You know, if your solution is a hammer, you're going to see all problems as nails? With Lex, all problems are nails, in this case aliens, so he sees all solutions as just different kinds of hammers."

Jess thought about this. "You don't think all aliens are problems."

"Well, they certainly aren't all nails. Some are butterflies. Some are torpedoes."

"What about Superman?"

"He could be a torpedo if he wanted to be. He chooses to be..."

"Not a butterfly!"

"Maybe an eagle? A condor?"

Jess thought about that conversation now as she watched Superman's cape whip out on a sudden wind that swept the roof. He reached back and gathered the red material in and sat on it. Jess smiled. She watched as Lena handed Superman a thumb drive, and her smile faltered. They had discussed this decision at length, giving the Man of Steel access to the locations of Lex's more residential holdings. Lena refused to give up Lex's labs, but if Lex were going to wantonly kill civilians, then she would absolutely give him no place comfortable to hide.

Jess had asked, "And you don't see this as a betrayal of the company?"

"I hope to save the company. Lex made those bombs here, I'm sure of it. The only way we can redeem ourselves is to separate the company from him and his madness. Jess, you don't have to help me, but I do ask for your discretion even if you won't."

And Jess hadn't said, "Ride or die," because Jess wasn't that kind of woman, extravagant and symbolic. She was practical, methodical. So she stood in the shadows and videotaped Lena and Superman shaking hands and Superman taking off into the sky. She turned off the camera as Lena came over, looking tired but confident.

"Well, Jess. Stage One is accomplished. On to Stage Two."


	7. And the Rain, It Raineth Every Day

Jimmy left the darkroom and put on his coat and went to stand on the balcony looking down from the Daily Planet onto a very wet and grey Metropolis. Days like this made him feel like his bones were lined with lead. It was the nature of the job. Inevitably, the good news that he recorded on film was short-lived, a day or two at most. The disasters went on for weeks.

He had visited most of the bombsites by now, and many of the victims. He had attended four funerals. The smell of cordite and gas leaks assaulted his nostrils in his sleep. Pain and destruction and death danced through his dreams. Rumors of Superman's death he could ignore while he was awake, but he nightly woke up gasping and reaching for his phone to text Clark.

And Clark, or sometimes Lois, would patiently text him back. "Alive and well. Go back to bed." It almost felt like his parents checking under the bed for monsters, humoring him. 

He knew he was too attached to Clark, but he couldn't help it. Sometimes Lucy remarked on it, but part of that was that she absolutely hated double-dating with Lois, and he understood and never insisted. And part of it for both Lane sisters was a never-spoken feeling that maybe Jimmy had a long-term crush on his alien best friend, an affection that could never be fully requited because, well, the Lane sisters. And both Clark and Jimmy were super straight, Jimmy was sure of it. The whole thing was just very confusing at the best of times. 

And right now, after Lex Luthor, Clark's former best friend, just committed mass murder in an attempt to kill Clark, was not the best of times, and James had taken hundreds of pictures in full color to prove that. And Lex was still on the loose, and that made Jimmy very nervous. He even suggested that Lois go out of town for a while, maybe out of the country, because as he pointed out, Lex still had that weird obsession with Lois and when Lex was obsessed with someone, he either tried to get them much, much closer to himself or he tried to destroy them.

Sighing, Jimmy shed his coat and went back into the dark room to check on the last batch of pictures. He looked at the ruined hospital wing, the wrecked wall of the FBI headquarters. Perry White's car on fire, luckily without anyone in it.

And the Superman monument downtown, the statue of the crest of the House of El, in pieces all over the grass of the park. It made Jimmy ache just to see it lying in rubble. It was all too depressing. He needed a break. He grabbed his coat again and headed out the door. He knew the one place that might just help him out of his funk. He drove his tired Civic across town and parked on the street next to the Metro House of Pizza, across from the Metropolis Museum of Fine Art. The MMFA had one of the best collections of Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz in the country. And although Jimmy always shot in color himself, he found looking at the masters at work in black and white to be restful, rejuvenating.

He paid his twenty dollars and got his ticket.

The museum was quiet in the middle of the day, and as always, the photography exhibit had far fewer visitors than the Impressionist exhibit down the hall. In fact, he saw only one visitor, an old man sitting staring at a photo of a young Georgia O'Keeffe's hands. Jimmy nodded at the man and strolled from picture to picture, admiring the way Adams emphasized the textures of tree branches, the smoothness of mountainsides, the dampness of the sky.

Color, on its own, often distracted from such details. People liked bright colors (Superman's blue suit, his red cape and boots). They didn't see things that didn't stand out (a black man in a black leather jacket and brown trousers). Jimmy wondered if Lex felt like that, ignored, unseen, standing in the grey shadows cast by a Titan standing between him and the light. Maybe it was no surprise that Lex would build shiny silver bombs that sprayed fragments of bright green stone in all directions.

Jimmy sighed again as he stopped before a photo of a white rose. It looked enormous.

Suddenly he realized that the old man had come to stand next to him. The man wore a tattered brown fedora on his bald head and leaned heavily on his cane. "You don't see work like this much anymore."

Jimmy grunted his agreement, hearing some visitors stepping into the room behind them. He murmured, "No, you don't."

"It's a pity," the man said.

And Jimmy thought, His voice sounds younger than he looks--

But then there was a sharp electric shock sent through his body, and that was the last thought he remembered.


	8. Rain is the Sky Descending to Earth

Lena was in her lab, working on a prototype for a miniaturized metal detector. It wasn't her favorite project, but if she was going to be questioned by the police over the next few days, it was something reasonable to be working on.

When the woman walked in, Lena felt a small shock of recognition. It was Sally, Sarah, something like that. They had met at Sappho's Cave, Metropolis's only lesbian bar, a hole in the wall compared to the more upscale gay bars that catered to the boys in town. The look on the shorter blonde woman's face told Lena that the detective knew exactly who Lena was, had probably known when they'd met a year or so before. No surprises on that side.

It should have made things simpler, but Lena thought it probably wouldn't. Life was never that simple.

She stood and stripped off her stained white lab coat, tossed it over the back of her computer chair, and gestured as she walked to the front of the lab, where a black couch and armchair made an L around a small coffee table.

"Detective. I think we've met... under other circumstances." She extended her hand. "Lena Luthor."

"Sarah Waters. I think you're right. It would be a pleasure to meet you again, if it weren't for..." They shook hands.

"Yes. Please, have a seat. What can I do for you?"

"Ms. Luthor, I think you already know. We are looking for your brother."

"And if I knew where he was, I would absolutely tell you. Protecting people from possible antagonistic aliens is one thing. Killing people--human and nonhuman--and claiming to be protecting them? That is something completely different."

"So you don't agree with his..."

"Anti-alien hate-speech propaganda rigamarole? No. There are undoubtedly bad aliens out there, the same way that there are bad humans. But we can't classify them and then what? Put them in death camps? Humans have tried that in the past. It didn't end well, as you might recall."

"I definitely do. Our people were classified as well. Does he realize how much you identify with his perceived enemies?"

"On odd days, yes. On even days, no. I don't mean that literally. It's just that his... mania? It is hard to predict."

"I understand that," Waters said, "but it would be very helpful if you could give us some ideas about where he might go--"

Lena listened to the detective say pretty much the same things that Superman had said. The difference was that Superman actually knew Lex. They had worked together, even been friends to an extent, before they had become enemies. The difference was that even though Lex and the Man of Steel came from two different planets, they were both men.

Sarah, on the other hand...

In the short time they had spent together, Sarah had proven herself to be supremely attentive to details, an out of the box thinker, a woman with an inscrutable poker face.

The detective faltered, and Lena refocused. "I'm sorry. Go on."

"Did I lose you there, Ms. Luthor?"

"I'm sorry, yes, a little bit. I haven't been sleeping well since all of this started. I have my work here and then I've been trying to convince the Board that we have to get out in front of this, but they are..."

"Concerned with the legal repercussions?"

"I was going to say 'suffering from testosterone poisoning,' but yes, that will work just as well." Lena sighed. "I do believe that sometimes one's legal responsibility gets in the way of one's moral responsibility>"

"Especially when one is a corporation rather than a human, or, let's say a person."

"Exactly." Lena stood and walked over to her lab table. She picked up the device and turned it over in her hands. "Tell me, Detective, you still play Texas Hold 'Em?"

The woman blushed. "From time to time. It's rare to find a good enough partner to play against."

"Oh, I hear you on that." She thought about Jess's arguments about who to give information to, what information to give. She set down the device and picked up her lab coat, fished in the pocket, and took out a thumb drive, a twin of the one she gave Superman. She walked back and sat on the couch. The detective didn't say a word, just watched her face.

"I don't know how much this will help. Lex has at least seventeen residences and eleven storage facilities in Metropolis, Opal City, Chicago, Star City, and others." Lena looked at the detective's long-fingered hands and shivered as she handed her the drive. "If you do find him, just..."

"We'll do our best to take him in alive, Ms. Luthor."

"Yes, I, thank you for that of course. But what I meant to say was, be careful. Yourself and your colleagues. Be very careful. And you, Det-- Sarah. Wear a vest. Extraterrestrials aren't the only Others that Lex detests. My brother has done horrible things. I would hate to think that you..."

The detective took the drive and put her free hand on Lena's. "Thank you, Ms-- Thank you, Lena. No dead lesbians today."


	9. The First Ripples

Lucy arrived at the bar ten minutes early (no surprise) and ordered a scotch neat and scrolled through her phone while she waited. When the waitress came and asked if she wanted to order or wait for the rest of her party, she looked at the time, shocked, and asked for the check. Twenty minutes late was either a story or an emergency, and on a week like this, she thought there might not be a difference. She called. James didn't pick up. Clark didn't pick up. Lucy signed the check, tipped back the last of her drink, and called Lois.

"Lucy?"

"Yes. Where are the boys?"

"And hello to you too. Clark's in the shower. Why?"

"Jimmy's late. Almost half an hour. And he's not answering his phone. Ask Clark if he can hear him."

"Luce--"

"Yes, Lex is on the loose. So don't 'Luce' me. Ask. Clark. Now."

"All right. Hang on." There was silence, then voices at a distance, then Clark's voice. "Lucy when did you last talk to him?"

"Right after lunch. He seemed depressed but he said he had a lot of film to develop. Can you hear him?"

"No."

And that one syllable sank in her stomach. "You don't think--?"

"On any other day, I wouldn't, but it has to be Lex. Probably it's a trap for me, but you should have the DEO on call, in case he starts kidnapping aliens too. I'll call the police."

"Won't help. Hasn't been twenty-four hours."

"I know a detective."

And Lucy got in her car and headed back to work, feeling guilty because she wished it had been Lois again rather than James. Lois knew Lex pretty well by now and she was tough as nails. Lucy worried about James. He would absolutely hate it if Lucy had to save him.


	10. Wading Through

When she got back to the precinct at 8:40, the first thing that Detective Sarah Waters thought was how much paperwork the raids on Lex's Metropolis properties were going to generate. The second was that Superman had apparently left her a message on her personal phone that she had left in her desk during the raids.

John Steel: Jimmy Olsen is missing as of at least 6 pm, probably earlier. Can you search for his car?

Sarah tried three pens before she found one that actually had ink and managed to jot down the license plate. She gave it to her partner and then called Superman back. "It's Waters. Any luck?"

"Not yet. There is nothing either at his office or his apartment to show where he was taken, but if it's Lex, he would have done it in a public place anyway."

"Has he contacted you yet? Ransom demands? Anything."

"Not yet," said Superman.

"Well, we have found a few things. Things that seem odd. Could you come down to the main precinct and, um, advise?"

"Yes, ma'am. I can be there in ten minutes."

"Of course you can," muttered Sarah as she hung up. "You can freaking fly."

//

By the time Superman arrived at the precinct, Sarah had typed up the forms to request warrants for some of the searches she wanted to do, including Jimmy Olsen's phone records. She knew at least one judge who would take Superman's word on the urgency of the situation (he was an old friend of General Sam Lane, and he knew quite well of Lex's habit of kidnapping people close to the Man of Steel). She set her partner on that set of tasks while she led Superman into the conference room where she had gathered the evidence taken from the Luthor residences that she had been able to access, not including the family mansion, where Lillian's lawyers had been camped out ready and waiting for her. No big surprise.

But there were other places and other things, some of them technological and some of them more ordinary. Superman looked at the Tourist's Guide to Metropolis and pointed to some sites that he had been at with Lex Luthor: the Science Museum, Roosevelt Tower, the Daily Planet, the marina down on the wharf. She sent uniforms to keep an eye out, but she didn't have high hopes.

Still, that was policework, wading through the evidence you had and hoping that some small piece of flotsam or jetsam would rise to the surface and show itself to be useful, informative, crucial.

She looked at her watch. Midnight. Jimmy Olsen had been missing for six hours and there was no word about him. She hoped for his sake that they could wade through fast enough.


	11. Flash Flood

Lillian Luthor sat in her office at LuthorCorp, counting backwards from ten, then looked up at her daughter, her jaw stiff and stubborn as she closed her laptop with a click, and Lillian gritted her teeth and counted backward again. When she could trust herself to speak with no emotion, she said, "Lena, dear, I think you are forgetting how risk-averse Lionel's friends have always been."

They both knew that "Lionel's friends" meant the old, white male Board members that Lex had not managed to replace when he became acting-CEO.

Lena said, "On the contrary. I remember all too well. But there are different kinds of risks, Mother. There are the risks of business innovation and there are the risks of criminal malfeasance. I refuse to think of Lex's recent mis-strategizing as a death knell for LuthorCorp. On the contrary. I think it is an extraordinary business opportunity."

"They won't go with you."

"You never know, Mother. After all, it is a brave new world."

And Lillian stood and stepped over to the window with its panoramic view of Metropolis. She remembered Lena's freshman year at college, how Lionel and Lex had insisted on visiting her during homecoming weekend. Lena had proudly led them all over campus, ending in the lab of the world-class engineer who had changed his lab's rules to take on a freshman, Lena. He gushed about her to the Luthors, to Lionel and Lex's pleasure. "Your daughter will be at the forefront of twenty-second century engineering, decades ahead of her peers. It's a brave new world!"

Lillian had given him her practiced stiff smile. Then they met Gabriella, Lena's older lab partner, who greeted her with a kiss. "Hey, babe, I got done with the experiment much sooner than I expected, so I can hang out with you and your family after all!"

Lena's face didn't change, but her posture shifted so that she was taller. "Mom, Dad, Lex. This is Gabriella. My girlfriend."

There was a very charged split second of silence. And then Lex was offering the woman a hug and Lillian offered a cold handshake. Lionel muttered, "Well, that's very... modern."

Gabriella laughed at Lionel's comment. "Modern? Yeah, I guess. Like Professor Zetka always says, 'It's a brave new world!"

Back in the present in Metropolis, Lillian said, "Lena, please. You know I detest that phrase."

But then there was a knock on the door. Jess and Lillian's assistant stood looking worried. "The Board has called an emergency meeting. In ten minutes."

Lillian and Lena shared a surprised look. Lillian snorted, "They haven't informed me."

Jess looked angry. "No, ma'am. I think you two weren't meant to find out about it."

//

Lillian thought Lena's surprisingly astute assistant was probably right. When the two Luthor women swept into the boardroom like a queen and her crown princess, the overwhelmingly male board members looked like a nervous cabal whispering plans for a coup d'état. Their surprise was evident and, to Lillian's mind, damning.

The start of the meeting was rocky, with Gerald Cox, a Lex man, vying against Harold Hudson, Lionel's old lab partner, for control of the board. Lillian caught Lena's eye and gave her a wait-and-see gesture. The two men engaged in a verbal pissing contest, Cox being louder and cruder, while Hudson maintained decorum but showed his age, as the longer the argument wetn on, the more tired he seemed.

Finally the door opened and Lillian's assistant came in with a file folder. The woman was bright, a Yale graduate, but Lillian thought that preemptive research and strategizing were not among her primary abilities. Lena's face remained placid and blank, which told Lillian all she thought she needed to know. Slowly, she opened the folder and began reading through the documents, a small smile spreading across her features. The arguing men faltered and fell silent.

Terrence Snodgrass, a thorn in Lillian's side from way back, snapped, "Mrs. Luthor? Is there something you'd like to share with us?" As if he were a third-grade teacher who had caught Lillian passing notes.

"Well," she said kindly. "I really would, now that the SEC has been informed about all these charges." She looked up and down the table, and faces went white at the sight of her smile, which reached her eyes and made her look ten years younger. Lillian Luthor only smiled like that when the world was falling apart, like apocalypse was her favorite dessert.

"Charges?" said Hudson.

"Oh, yes. It's all here. Collusion to lower LuthorCorp stock, short selling, insider information, emails about acquisitions of divisions--oh, that's interesting. IBM, Apple, LordTech. Heavens, LordTech? Someone was slumming. Oh, I see. It's you, Terrence. Well, you always did have poor taste. Imagine wearing brown shoes with a black suit."

Behind her, several police officers entered the room, followed by men wearing rumpled suits and serious expressions.

And it was just possible that Lillian had only ever seen her daughter smile at her twice: once after the four-year-old beat her older brother at a game of chess and Lillian had called her a real Luthor. And then, so many years later, today.


	12. Strange How the Night Moves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flashback

Izzy Piper looked at her watch and closed her books, shoving them into the heavy canvas backpack. The library was quiet on a winter Friday afternoon and the quiet was grating on her nerves. She threw on her hat and parka, grabbed her cane and went outside into the dense fog, waiting for the bus that would take her to her part-time job. She wondered if she would see Lee there, and could not decide if the emotions roiling in her stomach were more hope or more trepidation.

On the one hand, it had been a few years since she had felt that spark that suggested intimacy was a good possibility. On the other, she did have a cover to maintain while she did her studies at the Royal College of Defence Studies. A relationship, even a friendship, might get in the way. She could deal with the loneliness; she had done it most of her life. But she had a feeling that Lee was different, an opportunity she shouldn't pass up. Certainly, the woman had a mind like a razor. The way she talked about chess, Izzy thought she would have made a good strategist, even if her mind couldn't quite wrap itself around a woman that feminine actually being a Marine. It was one thing to think ten moves ahead of everyone else, but what if she broke a nail?

And in her heart of hearts, Izzy knew that she was stereotyping the woman so that she would not have to call her, invest in her, get her heart broken by her.

The bus came and she struggled on, too many books in her backpack and her cane still not as much a part of her as her AK-15 had been.

//

Lee finished the email to her brother and hit send. She hoped he would be impressed with the changes she had suggested on his inductor coil. She hoped he wouldn't notice that she had not mentioned Izzy since her first excited email on Sunday afternoon. The woman was fascinating and kind of cute and a quick learner. But maybe Lee just wasn't her type.

She closed her laptop and decided to go to the club, maybe get a few games in before finding a place for dinner. And maybe Izzy would be there...

Lee was hanging up her coat at the club when she heard the opening strains of Moonlight Sonata, and it made her homesick for Metropolis, with the moon above the river as the sun went down, the two orbs at opposite sides of the sky. She sat at an empty chess table and set up the pieces. She was willing to play alone if she had to but she rarely had to. A handsome young man challenged her and she acquiesced with a smile. He was skilled, if not particularly creative and she beat him four times out of five before she decided that enough was enough.

She got the attention of Gerty, an older barrister who showed up on the rare odd occasion and always gave Lee a run for her money. They played eight games and Gerty won six before the fellow came back and asked to play with Lee again. Gerty saw her eyes roll and told the man to find another partner. Lee decided to just leave while she was ahead, and she noticed that the piano had gone silent. She looked at her watch. It seemed early for Izzy to be leaving, but she saw the woman putting on her parka and hefting her backpack. Lee moved more slowly to give the woman time to meet her at the door with her cane. 

"Going my way?" asked Lee with a smile.

Izzy blushed. "Maybe... Where are you going?"

"First stop, pie and a pint. Second stop, home..."

"Well, a girl needs to eat after all."

"Mm hmm."

Under the streetlights it appeared that Izzy was blushing again and Lee kicked herself. It wasn't like she was completely incapable of not flirting. It was just that cute girls short-circuited her ability to even pretend to be straight.

"Sorry," she said. "There's a really good place just two blocks down." She noticed that Izzy was moving slowly. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. It's just the damp gets into my bones. I just had to go to grad school in London. I couldn't find a place in Malibu or Fort Lauderdale... You don't seem to notice it so much."

"I went to boarding school in Ireland. It was either get used to it or go home to Metropolis, and that was not an option. But yes, I do prefer California weather. Who doesn't?"

The pub was warm and smelled of meat pies and fish and chips. Gradually, Lee watched Izzy relax. "First round's on me. What's your pleasure?" asked Lee.

Two pints of ale and two meat pies later, they were talking like old friends, although Izzy sidestepped every one of Lee's unintentional flirt-burps (as Gabriella used to call them).

Finally, Lee felt bold. She reached across the table and took Izzy's right hand in hers, making circles with her thumb on the back and looking her right in the eye. "So, Izzy. I get that I'm probably not your type. But you are a lesbian, right? My gaydar isn't that far off, is it?"

Izzy actually laughed. She squeezed Lee's hand in response and finally said, "To your second question, yeah, I am. To your first, a woman would have to be out of her mind for you to not be her type. I just..." She nodded to where her cane leaned against the rough brick wall of the pub. "I've been out of commission for a while now."

Lee asked, "You were in an accident?"

Izzy gave a short, mirthless laugh. "I think it's fair to say that what I was in was no accident." When Lee's face showed incomprehension, Izzy explained, "It was an IED, in Iraq, well, that's the official story."

"And the unofficial story?"

"Would believe a grey-skinned alien from another galaxy?"

"You'd be surprised at what I would believe," said Lee, and her voice was hard.

Izzy watched her carefully. "Let's go with the IED. It's much more impersonal."

Lee nodded. "If you like. I've been trying to get my brother--he's an engineer too, like me--to work on more medicinal applications for some of the nanotechnologies that are coming out now, but he tends to be more of an offense kind of guy."

"So I imagine you beat the pants off him at chess."

"I do, actually. Always have." She smiled at the memory.

"You're not surprised that I talk about aliens as if they actually exist?"

"I've met a few. Some good, some bad. And anyway, it challenges the boundaries of belief to think that in infinite galaxies, there is no other sentient life. I find it hard to believe that we are the best the universe can do. Or the worst."

"Hear, hear," said Izzy, raising her pint glass to clink with Lee's.

They talked for a while after that, about technology, about climate change, about the upcoming Olympics, about movies they loved and hated. Finally, Izzy was looking at her watch and Lee quickly apologized. "I'm so sorry! I've been monopolizing you and I'm sure you had plans..."

Izzy sighed. "No plans. I finished my homework in the library this afternoon. My weekend is chock full of absolutely no plans."

"Well, would you be interested in a few games of chess? At my place?"

Izzy held her eyes for a fairly long time before saying, "And this chess, is it anything like showing me your CD collection?"

Lee laughed. "Has that line every gotten anyone laid?"

"Straight guys, for the most part. Yes. Chicks like you and me? Probably not so much."

"Well," said Lee decisively, "That is probably why I lead with something that actually requires intellect. I like the smart girls." And she winked and bit her lip, the move that Gabriella had referred to as Two-Fer Flirting™. It had never let her down yet.

It did not let her down now.

//

Izzy ached from the dampness and she ached in a different way (also damp) while looking at this radiant woman who laughed and joked about how butch she was and insisted on taking Izzy's overstuffed backpack, and Izzy chuckled at the idea of this over the top femme trying to be a lumberjack.

But as they were walking though the rising fog, Izzy stopped short and said, "Just a minute. Stop talking."

Lee fell silent immediately. 

Izzy listened, but heard nothing. "Hm," she murmured. "Let's just move a little faster, shall we?"

And Lee nodded and strode ahead until she realize that she was outpacing Izzy with her cane and then she slowed a little. "We should get a cab," she said quietly.

But then Izzy was twisting away, her cane making a great arch and coming down on something with a loud CRACK! Izzy didn't even think. She felt a stick come down on her left shoulder and she lashed out with her cane again, then flipped the cane and smacked the man's head, pulled the cane in so that the hook caught his neck and yanked him to the ground. The cane flipped almost on its own and another loud dull noise met the cane meeting the man's temple.

It was the man from the chess club. Izzy knelt and felt for the pulse in his throat. Then she reached into her parka pocket and pulled out a flashlight, raised his eyelids and checked his eyes against the light.

"Out cold," she said. "Not concussed. What were you saying about a cab? Let's do that!"

And they hurried down the block through the fog to a cabstand and ended at Lee's flat.


	13. St. Elmo's Fire

Lois paced back and forth across the apartment she shared with Clark Kent. She was anxious, itchy. She didn't like it that Jimmy Olsen of all people had been the person Lex Luthor decided to kidnap in order to call out Superman from his self-imposed silence. It should have been her.

She knew Lex Luthor pretty well by this time. Hell, how many times had he abducted her in the last six or seven years? Twelve? Fifteen? She'd lost count. But he always had impeccable timing. He had always plucked her from the rosebush Happiness to cram her into the thornbush Six Hours Until Detonation: When she had first kissed Clark, when they had decided they were dating, when he had risked his Superdom for her, when she had laid her life on the line for him.

When he'd asked her to move in with him.

And now, instead of her, Lex had chosen... Jimmy?

She fumed, then paused. What if Jimmy was a diversion, and she was the real target? And Clark had flown off to the police station and Lucy had gone off to the DEO.

She had a moment's hesitation, but her love of life was stronger even than her pride. She dialed Lucy.

"Lane."

"Right back atcha, Sis. Has it occurred to you that this Jimmy stupidity could be a diversion?"

"To get at you? Duh, of course. You have six DEO agents stationed around the apartment and the MPD has a cruiser doing a grid sweep. Do you really think I'd let him take you? Again?"

"Oh, I, uh..."

"Seriously. No faith at all. And that's probably why he took Jimmy, because obviously we never saw it coming. So stop focusing on yourself and--"

Lois's phone buzzed. "Um, I have another call coming in..."

"Clark?"

"No, it's blocked."

"Hold him on the line as long as you can. We'll trace it!"

"But it might not be--" She hit the button. She recognized his voice.

"Ah, Lois, Lois, my love. It has been far too long, has it not?"

"Oh, Lex, do get over yourself."

"Yes, I thought you'd say that. You have never taken me seriously, after all of our times together: Chicago, Toronto, the Fortress of Solitude, Paris..."

"Lex, we have never been in Paris at the same time, I am completely sure of it."

"Such a pity. I always wanted to say we'd always have Paris. Never mind. Jimmy and I, however, will always have Metropolis, because Jimmy will never have anything else. I'm sure that your dear, dear sister will be quite put out if you don't send your alien boyfriend to save him."

"Yes, she'll be pissed. Too bad."

"But I don't think any of you have ever realized just how... close Jimmy and his Superfriend really are. I believe that they got quite close a few years ago. How close? Let me show you."

And suddenly a video appeared on Lois's phone and is showed Jimmy Olsen in a black tank top and briefs hanging in a complicated leather harness while strobe lights played over his drugged face.

"Darling Lois, let Clark know that I have some very interesting demands that he is going to have to fulfill fairly quickly if he ever wants to see his bestest buddy back. Ta ta, my love."

Lois stared at the video and then forwarded it to Clark, adding a text message.

FastLane: I know where J is. And it's not good.


	14. What the Rain Learns from Its Raining

Lex Luthor threw himself into his desk chair, picked up the paper notebook and ran a line through Taunt Lois with Vid of J. 

The next things on the list were: Large Veggie Pizza, Pick up Dry Cleaning, and Consider a Partnership with A-Man. 

He turned to where a man in colonial clothing, like something out of the musical Hamilton, was hard at work at a table with high-tech equipment that belied his dress. Bits of mirror, wires, a lead-lined box that was worth half of Lex's fortune, and a few take-out menus littered the tabletop.

"So 'Paul,' are you hungry yet?"

"No, and I won't be until you lose the quotes on my name, Lexie."

"You really do know how to rile a fellow, don't you?"

"I but learn from my superior."

"You're not moving fast enough."

"I imagine not. Yet I am clearly moving faster than you would if you thought you could move as fast as I."

Lex muttered curses, then said, "It would still behoove you to work a bit faster."

"It would still behoove you to get one of those strangely delicious pie things to quench my hunger and lend me strength."

Lex picked up his burner phone and dialed the pizza place.

"Alberto's Pizzeria, how can I help you?"

"Hi, yes, I'd like to place an order for pickup."

"The name?"

"Paul Revere."

"Er, ah, yes, Mr. Revere, and what will that order be?"


	15. Every Raindrop Calls Your Name

The house south of Metropolis that Lena was using as a secret storage facility had a shady history, Jess knew. There on the edge of Metropolis University, it had been a frat house, but the kinds of initiation rituals the frat had practiced were... not focused on beer and goofy shenanigans.

Blood rituals and human female virgins, yes. Beer, not so much.

But then something had happened that had stopped that particular legacy, stopped it so firmly in its tracks that alumni who still considered themselves connected to the frat had been found guilty of so many financial crimes, sex crimes and abductions/deaths, that the whole institution crumbled from the inside out. The national body was down to two octogenarians who couldn't really see or hear. The money, once in eight digits, had completely disappeared.

And the house was empty, except for ten silver cases, lined in lead, which sat in the subbasement. Chains on the walls suggested a past that Jess never wanted to think about. Lena said not to worry about it, that all of that had happened decades ago, and Jess really, really wanted to believe that was true, although the tiniest bit of Googling she had done suggested that the last house had been in Sunnydale, California and it had been the late 1990s when the last of the frat inexplicably collapsed. The house in Metropolis had been empty since 1963, and Jess did not ask any questions about how that had happened. None. No questions. Nope.

Lena arrived that night, tired and annoyed, but when Jess pointed to the rusty chains on the wall, Lena had simply gone into her Gucci bag and pulled out a laser pistol and shot the chains off the wall. "Better?" she asked.

And Jess had to admit that, yes, it was much better after that.

Lena opened her fresh red Moleskine notebook, and Jess remembered that for Lena, red generally meant a time-sensitive emergency. The hand-written list was lined with question marks.

Lena said, "We started some of these project four years ago. Some I started in the last six months. So I recognize a few things, but not everything. We're going to have to figure it out from scratch." She tossed four tired green Moleskines onto what looked like a dusty old altar. Jess remembered that green, for Lex, had meant newness and power.

The two siblings were so different, and also so similar. The whole thing was dizzying.

Lena set her to look at the last two cases. "There's nothing dangerous in those, I'm pretty sure. The first three will require HazMat suits, that I'm going to have to deviously requisition or quite possibly steal, so we'll go through the last seven cases and worry about the other ones later."

Jessica Huang was many things: an engineer, a marketer, a friend, a Chinese-American, a straight girl, a forward thinker, a problem-solver and one of Metropolis's top three personal assistants. Maybe even top two. She was still competitive. And she drew on that characteristic as the two of them went though the cases, one piece at a time.

"Um, Ms. Luthor?"

"Jess, seriously. We've known each other for years. We're not at the headquarters. Call me Lena."

Jess looked at the green tinge of the little toy she had just picked out of the grey foam. "Yeah, Ms. Um Lena. You might want to look at this..."

Lena looked at the thing that resembled nothing more than a to-scale replica of the Yellow Submarine. "I see your point," she said. "Maybe you could look at this?"

It was like a wing made of metal feathers, but when she pulled at them, they came loose and when she put them back they stuck to the other feathers.

She stared at Lena. "Icarus, Daedalus, and... Captain Nemo?"


	16. In the End It's All Just Hydrogen and Oxygen

Sarah Waters had been a Metropolis cop for a long damn time, and she had seen a few strange things, make no mistake. And Metropolis was largely better than Gotham. Hell, anyplace was better than Gotham when it came to supervillains. But she thought that she would live a long time before she saw a sight as strange as this one.

After all the NDA forms, she had been taken down to the staging area of the DEO. Superman was standing off to the side, talking to an older man who was wearing a pink beret and a pink T-shirt with a panther's paw outlined in black. A group of a dozen men, women and non-binary individuals were wearing similar outfits. Nearby, another group stood around in black tactical gear and high- and low-tech weapons. The two women who approached her, one in black tacticals and the other in a navy pantsuit, could have been sisters, with their black hair and grey eyes. They both certainly looked pissed off in exactly the same way.

Superman saw them enter and clapped his friend on the shoulder and came to join them.

"Detective Waters, may I introduce you to Lois Lane, Daily Planet, and Major Lucy Lane, DEO."

Sarah nodded. "And does the DEO routinely do missions with the Pink Panthers?"

Lois flushed, but Superman simply nodded affably. "Not often, but this is a... trickier mission than most. The video of Jimmy looks like it was taken at the Rigging."

Sarah just looked at him. Yes, of course, she had heard of the Rigging. She was a detective after all. But why on Earth the Man of Steel knew about Metropolis's gay leather bar was something she really, really didn't want to know. "I see."

"We thought it would be better if DEO and MPD troops didn't handle that part of the mission. Anyway, I am pretty sure it's a diversion. Lex would never be sloppy enough to actually send me a video of wherever he actually has Jimmy."

"So where do you think he has him?"

"We're following his microchip signal. There are a few locations we know he has been, and we are going to split up the teams and send them out to all of those."

Sarah pinched the bridge of her nose. "Let me get this straight. You microchipped your best friend?"

Lois rolled her eyes. "When you're close to Superman, it helps to be easy to find. Trust me."

"Yes," said Sarah. "I've heard about you." Her phone rang and she looked at the number, not recognizing it. "Waters."

"Detective. Lena Luthor. I have some information that might be useful to you, about this kidnapping. Also, I have an idea about how to get my brother to come out of hiding and be more easily, well, arrestable. Can I come down to the precinct to discuss it with you?"

"You know what, Ms. Luthor, I'll just meet you at your office. I'm not far from there in any case."

Superman gestured for Sarah's phone and she gave it to him. He took it and strolled away, talking to Lena. Sarah wondered when she had ever lost control of a case this way. Then again, superheroes and supervillains were something she had mostly managed to not have to deal with in her career as a homicide cop. Apparently, the newly formed Science Division was going to be another matter entirely.


	17. Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Back in the Water

Lex was a talker. Jimmy knew that. Lex loved nothing more than the sound of his own voice. So for the hour or so that Lex and his strange assistant had him hanging in the leather harness, Jimmy didn't bother to try to free himself. As long as Lex was talking, Jimmy was in no danger. And even though he had not had a chance to hit the alert on the watch Clark had given him, he had no doubt that his best friend knew that he was in danger. There was a lot to be said for dating a hyper-on-time soldier who had Superman on speed-dial. So although the harness was starting to chafe, he hung there, listening to Lex talk.

"You see what I'm saying, Jimmy Boy? Now a man and a woman, that's old hat, whether you're talking about Romeo and Juliet or the MacBeths. But a man and his bro? That's something you can count on!"

He went on and on like that and for the most part Jimmy let it go over his head, but when they were letting Jimmy down, he looked around and realized that the lights that were hitting the disco ball were green. Bright kryptonite green. And Lex was flipping Jimmy's watch open and hitting the S. And sliding the watch off his arm and leaving it in the middle of the sickly green room. And then a needle in his neck. And then nothing.

//

The next time he woke again, Jimmy was once more hanging from some kind of harness. Only this time he was not looking down at a scuffed black dance floor. He was looking down at a pool of water and something large and dark was swimming around down there. Jimmy Olsen was many things--a good photographer, a good friend, a terrible pool player. But he was not a fool. Lex Luthor would not have hung Superman's best friend over a pool that was the home of something small and safe, like a goldfish. 

When he heard the concrete break above him, he thought, Now, I am going to die. 

It was not a peaceful thought.

The flash of red and blue caught him and tore him out of the harness just as an enormous grey body leapt up, all sharp teeth and angry black eyes.

And they were flying through the air and Lex was screaming his head off. The splash was loud even from a hundred yards above what had to be the aquarium (with a new Superman-shaped roof entrance).

"You okay, Jimmy?"

"Clark! But Lex set a trap for you. He knew about my watch. There's kryptonite! And a disco ball, for some reason..."

Superman landed on the pier and put Jimmy down. "Yeah, I have some friends going to get your watch back and collect the kryptonite. Lex is so incredibly predictable sometimes."

Jimmy looked around and saw Lucy in her black tactical gear leading out the colonial guy and some of Lex's other thugs, but there was no sign of Lex.

Superman's phone dinged. Jimmy saw him take the phone out of his boot and grin. It was a Facebook post.

"Cl-- Superman. Seriously. Facebook, at a time like this?"

Superman grinned and showed him the phone. It was Lena Luthor's page. She had just updated to "in a relationship" and the picture was of Lena and Sarah Waters.

"Okay," said Jimmy, wiping water off his arms. "I don't get it."

"Lex isn't the only one who knows how to bait a trap."


	18. The Feeling of Being Rained Upon

Roosevelt Tower was one of the tallest buildings in Metropolis, and the view from the Sky Bar was exquisite. That was one of the reasons that Lena had emailed Sarah with this as the place they should celebrate starting to date again. 

Sarah had emailed back, "My captain is not going to be happy about this if he finds out."

"Well, we could always go back to where we met for the first time."

"Sappho's Cave? It doesn't open until 5. You're the one who suggested lunch."

"I'll have a drink waiting for you. Sidecar, wasn't it?"

"You remembered!"

"That's not all I remember."

Lena kept it light and flirty. And she had dressed for the occasion: black trousers, long-sleeved black shirt, black heels. In her bag she had the small, gift-wrapped package to give to Sarah. The tag read, "To the bravest woman I know." And that at least was true.

Lena's ears popped as she rode the third elevator up the last flights to the Sky Bar. She stepped out of the elevator pressing one finger to her ear and swallowing. Sarah had already gotten them a table. She stood as Lena walked in and they kissed lightly. Lena immediately handed Sarah the present.

"Lena, I--"

"No, I insist. And you have to promise me, if I can't, for any reason--"

"Ladies."

Lena and Sarah turned to see Lex Luthor wearing a strange silver cloth suit with a metal box on the back. On his head was an old-fashioned pilot's helmet with the goggles on the top of his head.

"Seriously, Lex?" said Lena. "You're wanted for several dozen murders and countless other major charges and you come to a restaurant dressed like Snoopy as the World War I flying ace?"

"Lena! It's been years and that's what you have to say to your big brother? Oh, and who is this blonde bombshell? I see you've stayed true to type."

Sarah opened her mouth, but Lena interrupted her. "Ignore him. He's always most sexist when he's busy being a villain. Lex, what on Earth are you doing here?"

"Kidnapping a member of the board of LuthorCorp, so I can get my company back."

"It's not your company. It belongs to the family and the limited shareholders."

"Doesn't matter. I just got Hudson to promise to make the company's lawyers get me off of these charges. On the promise of not dumping you, dear sister, into the river. Oh, wait, it was on the promise of dumping you in the river. How silly of me to forget."

Lena rolled her eyes. "You do realize that the SEC knows about your shenanigans with the board members? Hell, Mother knows. And let me tell you, Lex, she is totally pissed!"

He waved his hand airily. "She'll come around, eventually. She always does. And once I inherit your shares of the company--"

"But you won't, Lex. I changed my will after that whole Slide-California-into-the-Pacific-Ocean fiasco. Remember that? Now my shares will be split evenly between Abby Wambach and Ru Paul."

"Who?"

"The point is, you're not getting them and neither is Mother."

"Well, it hardly matters. If they're split between two people, no one is going to have a majority."

And that was when Lena knew for sure that Lex had lost some very important part of his mind, because he had to know that whoever she gave her shares to, she would do so with the clear intent that they have a majority vote. Once upon a time, he had known her very well.

Not anymore.

It made it a little easier, really. When Lex said, "Okay, Sis, I hate to rush but I'd like to have you dead before midafternoon, because if we wait, the stocks will be affected badly, and that would totally fuck up my financial planning. So say bye-bye to your new girlfriend. What was your name again?"

"Sarah."

And once, not that long ago, Lex had known all of the Metropolis cops by name.

Lena stepped into Sarah's arms and gave her a long, slow and (she hoped for Lex) unbearably gay kiss.

She was right. When she stepped back and looked him in the eye, he was squirming. But he was also taking out a device that looked remarkably like a laser saw, and then he turned to the window looking down on Metropolis and he cut a door-shaped rectangle. 

"Lex, don't!"

But he stepped forward and punched the glass and it fell out of the frame: a six by three foot rectangle of glass falling seventy stories to shatter on harmless pedestrians below.

Another mass murder.

And before she could register, he was hitting a button on his computer cuff, and a huge set of metal wings sprang out of the box on his back. From a distance, people might think that the metallic leaves were actually feathers. From a distance, he would look like an angel. But Lena knew him. She said, "They shouldn't have named you after Alexander the Great."

He lifted her easily. He had always been strong. She put her arms around his neck so that that her right hand could work her own computer cuff that was hidden under her left sleeve.

He dove out the window and the wings kept them at the same height as the Sky Bar. People were screaming. Lena nodded at Sarah, who looked terrified, but nodded back and picked up the gift-wrapped package from the table and began to unwrap it.

Lex shouted into the wind. "Take one last look at my city! Isn't she beautiful?"

But Lena said, "It's my city, Lucifer." And she stabbed the code into her cuff. The wings stalled. A handful of the metal "feathers" dropped away to the streets below.

"What did you do?"

"If this is the only way I can stop you, I will."

And then they were falling, falling, two dead weights heading toward the cold, hard and very permanent ground.

"How could youuuuuuuuuuuuuu!"

But there was a flash of red and blue and suddenly, they were landing in Roosevelt Plaza, splashing in the ornamental fountain. Lex pulled off his helmet, looking absolutely disgusted. Lena held onto Superman's biceps, because they were a real thing in what felt very much like an unreal world. And then the black-clad soldiers were taking Lex into custody and Superman was thanking Lena loudly for her sacrifice. 

Then, perhaps realizing that such things would sound much more convincing if they weren't standing ankle deep in water, he lifted her up and put her down on the sidewalk. People were cheering even as EMTs were binding bloody wounds. Lena's heart was pounding.

"Thank you, Superman," she said.

"Ms. Luthor," he said, and he bowed over her hand, leaving a light kiss on it.

And although Lena Luthor would never, ever admit it to anyone on Earth, just for a split second, she wondered if the rumors about Lois Lane were true and she felt just a tiny bit jealous.


	19. Denouement

Lucy Lane processed Lex Luthor herself. She got testimony from everyone who had been at the Sky Bar, and everyone who had been in Roosevelt Plaza. She read the man his rights and watched as the uniforms fingerprinted him. She put him in the DEO van and sent him to maximum security MPD holding cell and had her own DEO people guarding him.

Then she went to City Hall, to watch Jimmy Olsen taking pictures of Detective Waters thanking Lena Luthor for helping her investigation, and the mayor of Metropolis giving Lena Luthor a medal, the highest civilian honor for protecting the city, and Superman giving a speech about how all Metropolis residents should take Lena Luthor as their role model for civic responsibility.

Lucy watched Jimmy taking pictures of the movers and shakers try to move and shake the city out of its Luthors-Are-All-Evil mode. They tried. They failed. All around her in the crowd, she heard people complaining that Lena probably had been in on it from the beginning, that the company had been colluding or something, and anyway they heard the stock was down so probably Lena planned to buy shares back while they were cheap.

So Lucy watched Jimmy and Clark try to help the woman who had helped them, and she watched them fail. And she watched Lena Luthor, head held high as she walked away and got into a shiny black town car. And when Lucy looked back, she saw Jimmy Olsen looking lost. And that was the moment that she knew that she was about to lose him.

//

Lena stepped into the town car and took the medal off. She folded the red and yellow ribbon carefully and slid the honor into her Gucci bag. "The mansion, Tom," she said wearily.

She was no fool. Metropolis was no longer her home, no longer the home of LuthorCorp. Now that a third of the board was in jail or, more likely, out on very expensive parole, the time was ripe for some changes. She would need her mother's help though, and she had misgivings about that. Yes, Lillian had accepted Jess's excellent research to prevent the family from being completely disenfranchised from its own company, but Lena highly doubted that she would be willing to go along with Lena's vision of the future.

A future very different from the present or the past. There were a few board members who would be: Naomi Ginsberg, Dale Clinton, maybe one or two others. It would be hard work.

Lena sighed. It was always hard work.

Tom drove up to the front door of the mansion, and Frederick, the butler got the door for her. "Miss Luthor."

She strode into the family home, dropping her bag in the foyer. Frederick murmured, "She's in Master Alexander's room."

Of course, she was, thought Lena.

She took the stairs two at a time (the advantage of trousers over pencil skirts) and she strode down the hall to Lex's room. She stood in the doorway, watching her mother make the bed (Lex had always been slob outside of the lab), pick up clothes from the floor and put them on hangers in the closet. A dozen books lay open on his desk. She closed them and put them on the bookshelf, alphabetized by author. She glanced at Lena without any sign of seeing her. She looked for all the world as though she were a zombie.

Lena stepped away and went down to the foyer and picked up her bag. Frederick appeared behind her. "Call Tom," she said. "I'm going back to work."


	20. London When It's Not Raining

It was the adrenaline, Izzy was sure. Nothing else explained it. Not the fact that it had been years, not since before her second tour. Not that this woman was drop-dead gorgeous, with long, skillful fingers and a lively, skillful tongue.

Or, possibly, it was all of the above, Izzy figured later, when it was all over and she had regained use of the rational part of her brain again.

But in the meantime, her senses were on overdrive. Lee's hands shook as she unlocked the outer door and the jangling of the keys sounded loud, as did their breath as they hiked up the narrow stairs to the second floor and Lee unlocked that door too and pulled off Izzy's backpack and slung it to the floor.

They didn't turn on any lights. The streetlights outside the window gave enough light to see a pale couch and a Persian carpet.

They didn't even make it to the couch, but the carpet was soft under Izzy's naked back. Their hands hurried over each other's bodies, shucking clothes in all directions. Lee's pale skin was the perfect canvas for Izzy to mark out her territory in kisses. When Lee's hands slid down to Izzy's scarred leg, she moved them up high, until she had Lee's hands locked in one of hers above her head. She had never cared for power games but, on the other hand, the last time she had slept with anyone, she had been unbroken, at least on the outside. Now the scars on the inside were mostly healed but those from where her skin had been ripped apart, those were still unbearable. So with one hand above Lee's head and her lips dancing over her nipples and her other hand between Lee's legs where she was wet, so wet, Izzy kept Lee moaning until her hips were bucking and after Lee was done, Lee flipped them so Izzy was underneath and Lee worked her way down Izzy's body, keeping her hands drifting back and forth over her breasts and ribs as she licked and sucked until Izzy's moans were incoherent and the fireworks were exploding under Lee's mouth and then they slept.

//

It was one thing, Izzy thought much later, to wake up in combat fatigues in a ditch in the desert with a couple of stinky guys. It was something very different to wake up naked on an antique Persian carpet with a dark-haired goddess as her only blanket. There had been many things about the Marines that Izzy had loved, but this?

This was so much better than all of them.

Green eyes met Izzy's brown.

"Hey, beautiful," Izzy murmured.

"My hero. I forgot to thank you last night."

"What? All... that wasn't you thanking me? 'Cuz it kinda felt grateful."

Lee grinned. "There was gratitude, it's true. But it was for what you did with your hands, not your cane. I'm pretty sure that douche-bag never saw that coming."

"They never do. An obvious weakness is the best secret weapon. When the thing that makes them target you is the thing that you use to take them out? Man, I love that shit!"

"And that, my dear," said Lee, "is why you are going to be a chess master someday. You have the mind for it." She propped herself up on her elbows, which distracted Izzy for a moment. "That alien that injured you. That's why you're here, isn't it? If you hadn't been hurt, you wouldn't be here in England."

"You, missy, are reasoning past your evidence."

"But I'm not wrong, Izzy. I'm a genius, okay? We make leaps. But it stands to reason. Am I wrong?"

Izzy sighed. "You're not wrong."

Then Lee kissed Izzy's stomach and moved to her hip and then moved to press small, light kisses down the ropy scar that defined her leg. She lay her face against it and said quietly, "So, basically, if it weren't for this injury, this scar that you hate so much, I would never have met you? Then okay, I'm sorry, but I love it because it brought you to me."

Izzy's eyes filled. She wiped the water away, grimacing.

Lee said, "Honey, it's okay to cry."

"Marines don't cry."

"Neither do Luthors. It took me several years of therapy before I got over that bullshit. Take what you can from my experience. And my monthly co-pays. Sometimes crying helps. Period."

Izzy laughed a little and wiped the tears away. After a while, she said, "You are not what I expected from a chess nerd."

"What did you expect? A lack of social skills?"

"I guess. I never really thought about it. I just went in, played the music, got paid, went back to my classes and got on with my life. But you..."

Lee stroked Izzy's arm, distracting her again. "Mmm. Me. What?"

"You know, you're like my cane."

"A formidable weapon in capable hands. And oh, yes, darling, your hands are very capable!"

"That's not what I meant! Although, yes, damn straight. Or maybe not straight, exactly..."

"Definitely not straight."

"You know," said Izzy slowly, "my cane is basically an L, which is basically the movement of the knight, isn't it?"

"Mm. I suppose. So?"

"So... the knight is the queer piece. I mean, think about it. The pawns move one space at a time, in whatever direction, but always straight. The king and queen too. The rook moves as far as it wants but always straight, either forward/backward or side-to-side. The bishop moves in a straight line, although diagonally--I guess that means he's bi?"

"She. There are a lot of women bishops now in several Christian denominations. So she's bi. I like that."

"But the knight moves in an L-shape. So he starts going in one direction that you expect, and then suddenly goes off in the other direction, upending expectations, queering the fight. I think I shall be a black knight, queering the fight for truth, justice and much better coffee than I can get in this country."

"Yes, but we have scones."

"Touché."

They snuggled for a while, hands drifting in interesting ways. Finally, Izzy said, "I'm only here until the end of the semester. When I graduate, well, I'm not sure what happens after that."

"Me too. But here's the thing. Two and a half months can be a lifetime."

"You may be right about that."

And Izzy knew that nothing ever really lasted, and good things lasted much less long than bad things, but this? This was something worth trying, worth working for, worth protecting for as long as it lasted. Because in a city where rain and fog were the routine daily norms, this woman was bright yellow sunshine, warmth and a kind of sweet humanity that Isobel Piper hadn't felt in a very long time, and didn't expect to feel anytime soon.

And that was something worth fighting for, even if she had to die fighting for it.


	21. Epilogue

The DEO trucks made a caravan around the MPD truck that was headed out of Metropolis to the supermax prison that would hold Lex Luthor as he awaited trial. Once, a kind, brilliant young man of promise, now he was just one more criminal in an orange jumpsuit. But he had made his choices and now he would have to live with them.

Back at the precinct, Sarah Waters set the electromagnetic disruptor on her desk, smiling at the inscription carved into the side, grateful that Lena's had worked and Sarah hadn't had to use the one Lena had given her. Absque lesbianibus et non morieris hodie, indeed.

Several blocks away, James Olsen hefted the last of the boxes into the U-Haul truck and pulled the door down and locked it. Lucy stood on the sidewalk looking on. 

"I wish you didn't have to go, Jimmy."

"James, Lucy. It's biblical: new life, new name. I have to find out who I am without him to go running to."

She nodded, kissed him, watched him drive down the street, turn and disappear, out of her life, at least for now. She got into her car and drove back to the DEO sad, but not crying (soldiers don't cry). There was work to be done.

On the other side of town, Lena Luthor was giving a press conference about the changes to LuthorCorp now that the new board had made her CEO. It would take time, but she assured her listeners that the move to National City would allow the company to make a new name for itself as it changed its mission statement to become a force for good in the world.

Far above the city, Superman flew, watching the people of Metropolis, friends and enemies, getting on with their lives. He was sad to see Jimmy go--

James, Superman corrected himself.

But if Lena Luthor was going to move to National City, then Superman was glad that James Olsen would be there to keep an eye on her. He had his watch again. If it turned out that National City needed a hero, then Superman was ready to fly to its aid.

Well, that's what Superman thought.

But you and I, Gentle Readers, know that that isn't precisely the way the story is going to go...

 

FINIS


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